Gibraltar Scheme and Its Possibilities: London to Capetown without Changing Some reference has recently been made to the old project of linking up Europe with Africa by means of a tunnel unday the sea. The tunnel would traverse the Straits of Gibraltar. Such an_ undertaking would be enormous in itself and still more immense in its consequences.
the French have always regarded Mediterranean Africa as practically forming part of our own continent. A direct railroad, say, from Paris to Tangiers, and from Tangiers to point atter point in the African continent—probably, when the various schemes now under consideration are executed and coordinated, to Capetown—would certainly, apart from its immediate practical consequences, vividly strike the imagination and would help us to realise how inter-related are countries and continents.
In conjunction with a tunnel under the English Channel—which is a comparatively trivial operation—or even in conjunction with the Channel Train-Ferry from Calais to Richborough, which has been recently used, the Gibraltar tunnel would make it possible to travel or to send goods from London to Capetown without changing conveyances at any stage of the journey.
The conception is audacious, but it is technically sound. To show how audacious it is, it is only necessary to remark that the Gibraltar tunnel would at its lowest level be 1,254 ft. below the surface of the sea. In the English Channel the tunnel would be at nothing like such a depth.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.